I've Never Walked A Road More Reckless Than This
by Striped Candy
Summary: Joan and Sherlock are the sort of people who are so different it almost makes sense that they're inseparable friends, that their personalities don't clash, instead serving to balance and irrevocably change each other. A collection of oneshots, mostly told from Joan's point of view, about their adventures together in between cases.
1. Routine

**(A/N: Just as a head's up, I've only seen season 1 of Elementary-I've watched the entire thing twice, though not exactly recently. I can't find any information about long Joan was a surgeon, when she become a sober companion, where she went to medical school, etc. Maybe that sort of info is given in season 2; I wouldn't know, having never seen it. So if I get anything wrong about her or Sherlock, it's my mistake. Point it out nicely and I'll be sure to correct it. These oneshots are just going to be my interpretation on Joan and Sherlock, their relationship and lives together, answering questions I had while watching the show that I don't remember being answered . . that sort of stuff.)**

Joan sometimes has these _moments_. She doesn't know what to call them, what to make of them. She just lets them happen. It happens less frequently as time goes on. But sometimes she'll be standing in the N.Y.P.D. building where Gregson works, watching a criminal getting interrogated (for lack of a better word). Sometimes she'll be at a crime scene reviewing it with Sherlock for the first time, seeing what she can deduce and maybe, rarely, theorize, without him so she can hone her skills as a detective. Sometimes she'll be up on the rooftop of their apartment looking at Sherlock's beehive with him, or figuring out where a criminal has gone. And it just hits her: _She is not a sober companion anymore. She is an apprentice to an oddball detective with a history of drug use and obsession with crime scenes and beekeeping. _Joan never tells anybody she still gets these little shocked moments that she fully realizes, that it totally sinks in, what she's doing with her life now.

She remembers how hard she worked in medical school, that there were nights when she didn't sleep at all, preferring instead to just keep studying, studying, studying . . . It paid off. She was named the class valedictorian. She learned and absorbed so much information she was dubbed, affectionately and a little competitively, a walking medical encyclopedia. But Joan had had to be smarter than all her peers. She'd gotten a full scholarship. She had not been able to afford letting her grades drop, lest she lose her scholarship and therefore her place at school. In any event, it wasn't like her parents had been able to offer any financial aid towards college. She'd felt like she had to prove she was worthy to be there. Like she deserved it. So Joan worked her ass off and graduated valedictorian. She got offered a full-time job by one of the hospitals she had been an intern for. Joan had accepted, elated. At the time, Joan had never wanted anything else but to be a surgeon. It had been the ultimate dream, saving lives and curing people. Doing what she thought she'd love. And then four years later? She made a mistake that cost her her patient's life and her job. Joan's mother had been livid that she'd acted so foolishly.

It had been hard to live with the pain and guilt at first. She had laid in bed, unable to get out, for days on end. Her brother, quietly choking on his own anxiety surrounding her, had fretted over whether he should take her to an in-patient program. Instead she agreed to see a therapist. And then, secretly, when she was alone, agreed with herself to let her medical license expire instead of renewing it. No hospital deserved a surgeon who couldn't hold a scalpel without shaky hands.

Joan had been introduced to the idea of being a sober companion when her cousin's friend got into heroin. She found out that there were other ways of saving people, of helping without being in a hospital. The fact that her mother did not approve (being a surgeon was extremely respectable. A sober companion? Not even close) was a driving force behind the idea of switching professions. Joan was slowly becoming excited about a job that gave her access to be able to help change lives. The fact that she'd never have to be in a hospital setting for work was both a blessing and a curse (Joan missed being a surgeon so badly sometimes; it was like it had been injected into her veins and blood and bone marrow to want to be one. And ).

And then Sherlock happened. Joan had thought that it would be hell and then some, getting through the six weeks with him. His father owned five incredibly expensive places in New York. _Five! _And who knew how much property he had in other parts of the world?! She was expecting that her client, aka Sherlock, would be a pompous, bratty twelve year old stuck in the body of an adult struggling with drug addiction and impulses of relapsing. She hadn't been entirely wrong at first. Not about the drug problem, that was for sure. But at the same time, she'd been so, so wholly wrong about Sherlock.

Joan thinks he's a drug sometimes. Sherlock is addicting, fascinating. Trying to get out of doing anything with him is like trying to change her mind when she's already in a fast-paced free fall. New York becomes the most exotic place on Earth when Sherlock is with her (which is all the time). She feels like she's going to spend most of the rest of her life re-discovering the city by learning to see it through his eyes.

She doesn't tell anyone, ever, that those thoughts have crossed her mind more than once. Sherlock opened up this entire world she hadn't been able to see before but had been trying so hard to. It was like she'd been seeing the world through the wrong glasses her entire life, and when she'd met him, her prescription lenses had finally been perfectly adjusted. Now she doesn't see in various shades of gray and charcoal anymore. Before Sherlock, and after her mistake at the hospital, it had felt like being in her skin was all . . . wrong. She was fidgety when she was trying to be still, restless all the damn time. Joan hadn't been sure that feeling comfortable being who she was would ever feel like something that was attainable. And recovering from her self-deprecation, her anxiety, had been too dauntless. Or it had just seemed that way.

Sherlock forces her to get over it, to work through it, every day. To work through all the residual bits of trauma. So Joan runs around New York with him, watches him take care of bees, deduce, interrogate suspects. And she learns about art, architecture, different sorts of paper and penmanship from him. She learns about forging and lock-picking and finding the "right clues" at a crime scene and detecting lies. She learns about shooting guns, self defense, and sign language. Joan thinks it is the most bizarre form of recovery, being an apprentice consultant detective. She also thinks it is the most effective method on Earth.

Joan learns other things. She learns Sherlock's sleeping patterns. She learns what food he will eat on which days, when she can get him to consume something and when it is no use to try at all. She learns what tea he likes, what music. What he's fond of. What he hates. Joan can find patterns in his moods, in his beliefs, in his opinions, and in what he thinks. She's good at finding patterns; she blames it on years of medical training. Sometimes Sherlock will surprise her about something. Like when he started yodeling while riding a unicycle in their apartment. In a cupid costume, complete with the cheesy arrows and red tights. He claimed it was for a case. And Joan will chuckle and shake her head and wonder why she didn't expect that behavior.

Sherlock deduces everything he wants to know about her when he feels like it. Sometimes he can't. That frustrates him; Sherlock hates not knowing. Joan loves when that happens; she'll swear it's the best day ever. She will gleefully flaunt the fact that she now has a secret, so to speak, for as long as she can. He'll eventually figure it out, and wonder why he couldn't deduce it before.

They are each other's enigma.

Moments like the unicycle one will jumpstart one of Joan's _moments_. She realizes that _nobody else_ does what she does (except for Sherlock, but he's the tutor so he doesn't count). That nobody else is quite as fascinated by Sherlock as she is. That nobody, besides Irene/Moriarty (Joan is never quite sure how to refer to Sherlock's ex-girlfriend), has been allowed past Sherlock's defenses and walls as much as she has. Joan sometimes wonders what will happen if Sherlock gets tired of her; after all, it's not like she's selling sex appeal or even sex to keep him interested. All she does is give him her friendship and her time. And her patience, and her sass, and a thousand other things. Sherlock will give her a Look when she has those thoughts, like he knows exactly what's going on in her head and is telling her to shut up because he won't get tired of her, ever.

Joan will then wonder when her life with Sherlock, when they started the detective work as a team, not as a sober companion and client, became such a relied upon, enthralling routine for her. When everybody on the N.Y.P.D. starting seeing them as just one person, as Sherlock-and-Joan, like they are one mind, one soul, sharing two bodies. She sometimes feels like that's true. Because she knows how to communicate with Sherlock without talking at all, without looking at him at all. Joan wonders if that means anything, if at all.

And then she wonders what will happen when they are too old for this work. They will not be able to do this forever, as much as they'd both like to. But they still have lots of time ahead of them before they have to make that decision.


	2. I Want Candy

**(A/N: I don't remember if this is addressed in "Elementary", but in ACD's stories, Gregson's first name is Tobias. Just as an FYI, that's going to be his first name in these oneshots as well in order to stay true to canon. If/when I refer to them by their first names and not their last names, you know who I'm talking about. I don't know how many of you know this, but Lucy Liu played Alex Munday in the two ****_Charlie's Angels _****movies released in the early 2000s. I made a sort of indirect reference to that later in this.)**

Joan has had a trying day, to say the least. She'd woken up to an empty, silent apartment-weird, since Sherlock kept odd hours and was loud in the early morning. She'd figured he'd gone out walking. He likes that. Then she'd learned, as soon as she'd gotten dressed, that he had blown off his meeting with Alfonso and still wasn't back. She'd searched the apartment for some note of where he'd gone. He had left no trace. After checking in with Tobias and Marcus that they hadn't asked Sherlock to go to a crime scene (they hadn't), she had to check all his usual haunts in New York. She hadn't been able to find him anywhere. Joan had then sent him a text imploring him to tell her his whereabouts. He hadn't answered. She'd been annoyed, to say the least. They were supposed to have spent this day developing her skill at deducing people. Joan had just figured that since he was an adult, and no longer her client, she just wasn't going to bother him anymore. She'd talk with him as soon as they were both in the same place.

Getting a coffee had sounded nice in theory, to calm herself down. But Joan had come up a bit short on change, and then she'd spilled it onto her shirt. Her friend Carrie had called her and said that she was going to cancel on their dinner date; a family crisis was going on. Joan had also gotten her period, and without having a tampon or a painkiller with her, had to make a very uncomfortable walk home.

And upon getting there, she'd found Sherlock. Dressed as Hitler.

"Sherlock, what the _hell _are you wearing?" she asks she irritatingly kicks off her boots. "You can't go out like that." Joan closes her eyes and sucks in a breath, hands on her hips. She quietly counts to ten, reminding herself to be patient. When her eyes open, she sees Sherlock staring at her with a pout and and his arms crossed. "I told Alfonso you could meet him in half an hour at Tea Leaves, that little tea and coffee shop a couple blocks away, since you haven't met with him today. Now go change."

Sherlock looks put off by this and immediately protests. "I can't just change, Watson! I spent the entire day getting the necessary items for this costume and the last three hours getting it all on correctly."

"Sherlock." Joan enunciates the syllables in his name, practically refraining herself from spitting them out. "We have a meeting to get to in half an hour, and then Tobias has a crime scene he wants you to take a look at. _Get_. _Changed. Now. _Or so help me God I will knock you out and change you myself."

"You wouldn't dare," Sherlock counters, plopping down onto a a chair in the living room. He flicks on one of the multiple TVs he has, absently flipping through the channels as he speaks. "Besides, there's something more pressing I have to attend to. Alfonso is simply not a priority today." He looks at her expectantly, like he expects she'll see reason almost immediately, like he thinks she'll just agree with him, drop everything (again) for him.

"I don't care," Joan replies shortly as she heads to the bathroom, eagerly to put in a tampon and take a painkiller. She speaks louder as she puts distance between them. "Look, I've had a long day, Sherlock. Would it kill you to cooperate with me _just _this once?" She slips in and out of the bathroom, barely aware of what she's doing, just going through the familiar motions. She drops her purse down in the kitchen and wanders back into the living room, sinking into an uncluttered chair as she rubs her eyes.

"Can't we meet him another time?" Sherlock's voice is bordering on whine-y. "I have more important matters to attend to."

Joan feels like she's at her wit's end. All she wants is to meet Alfonso with Sherlock, then meet with Tobias and Marcus, and then have a quiet night in. _Is that too much to ask? _she wonders tetchily. There are lots of things she wants to tell Sherlock, but what comes out is a question: "You're telling me that you have something so pressing it involves missing meeting your _addiction _sponsor and helping out on a case, and you have to dress up as Hitler to complete it?" She really needs to make sure this is true.

"Your deduction skills are _superb_, Watson. I'm so glad you're here to make sense of everything," Sherlock replies dryly. He gets up and settles into a chair opposite her, his fingers drumming on the armrests. Joan glares at him for a moment, and he drops the condescending tone as he continues speaking. "Don't you know what day it is?" Sherlock asks animatedly, looking excited.

"It's Tuesday. Just a normal Tuesday, like every other day of the year," she mutters. Joan knows that today isn't either of their birthdays or Sherlock's anniversary of sobriety, so she's pretty sure that Sherlock has found some obscure and whacked holiday to celebrate.

Sherlock looks either disappointed or surprised by her answer; she can't be bothered to figure out which it is. "No it's not!" he exclaims. "It's October thirty-first!"

Joan can't stop herself from rolling her eyes. "So?" she asks. She doesn't get why the fact that it's Halloween today is a big deal. They're not kids.

"We're going to go trick-or-treating!" Sherlock explains, smiling. "That's why I'm Hitler."

Joan blinks. He's actually serious, completely serious, about this. "You can't go get candy door-to-door dressed as a sexist, racist, homophobic guy kind of responsible for World War Two and a near complete genocide of the Jews in Europe" is the first thing out of Joan's mouth. Of course she doesn't tell him that they're both almost forty, they're not supposed to go trick-or-treating (they're supposed to just acknowledge that it's Halloween since they're too old to go partying), that it's clearly a kid holiday, that they have an appointment in . . . twenty minutes. Of course she has to point out Hitler's less than admirable qualities first. Obviously she has her priorities straightened out.

"Was he?" Sherlock pips up, breaking Joan out of her reverie. He looks like he's never heard about this before.

"I-" Joan feels incredibly speechless just now. How does he _not _know about Hitler?! Sherlock had been born and raised in _England_, for Chrissake. There had been a time when his country had been attacked relentlessly by the German forces. And what Hitler had done was a big deal, years later. It would have been covered at some point in Sherlock's education.

She tells him as much, stressing how everyone would have learned _something _about Hitler at some point. In response, Sherlock contemplates this, then nods his head, like he's remembering something. "Attic Theory," he finally tells her. "Must have thrown out the information as soon as I could, and just retained Hitler's name and that he was an important historical figure." He gets up and brushes here and there on his outfit, like he needs to remove imaginary dust and straighten the already stiff-looking outfit. Sherlock offers her his hand expectantly. "I've picked out your costume already," he tells her. "You're obsessed with _Charlie's Angels, _so I decided you can be Alex Munday. Come on, your costume is upstairs; I want to show it to you."

Joan hesitates for a moment as she reaches for her cup of tea. She's been a fan of the show for as long as she can remember. When she was younger, she'd always wanted to dress up as one of the characters, much to her mother's annoyance. While her mother and father had never explicitly forbidden Joan from watching the show and obsessing over it, Joan had always sort of understood that it was sort of frowned upon by both her parents to indulge in distractions from school. She'd adored the movies that had come out early in the 2000s that were about the show, liking that it had seen a revival of sorts.

Well, she could finally revel in her love of _Charlie's Angels. _She was an adult now (albeit an adult with a kind of sad fascination with the show and movies, but whatever). Joan sighs, realizing that Sherlock has indirectly, maybe (but unlikely, knowing him) unwittingly gotten her to manipulate herself into saying yes. She lets her fingertips brush the handle of her mug before standing up, her feet automatically nudging aside the papers scattered around her chair. "Alright," she agrees with a quiet sigh, knowing full well she is probably going to regret this.

Joan wishes she could talk Sherlock out of wearing his costume, could talk him into dressing up as someone else. But it won't be any use. Sherlock is settled on being Hitler. And once he's decided something, he'll stick to it, right down to the end refusing to change his mind. Mostly she just wishes he'd chosen someone else, maybe Winston Churchill. He was certainly inspirational. Nor did he order the mass killing of different kinds of people, or try to create an Aryan race of people. Joan suspects that Sherlock just wants to be Hitler because it's shocking, because Hitler is like the ultimate taboo subject, but one that is talked about in schools. It'll cause people to stare and raise eyebrows and talk, seeing Sherlock's costume. He has a flair for the dramatics, Joan has come to learn. And this is dramatic, if a bit inappropriate and/or childish.

Sherlock meets her eyes as she squints at him for a moment. "Did you draw on a mustache with a Sharpie?" she asks.

"Yes. I couldn't find any suitable fake mustaches, and I do hate having to grow actual facial hair," he replies primly.

Joan rolls her eyes. She recalls their first meeting (or maybe it was the second or third conversation they had together), how Sherlock accused of her just being a "glorified monkey helper". Sometimes she feels less like Sherlock's friend and more like that, like she is babysitting a five-year-old trapped in a middle-aged body. "You let Alfonso and Tobias know that we won't be available this evening while I go get changed," Joan more or less orders.

She makes a mental note to avoid the Jewish tenants in their apartment building while she trots upstairs to change. She doubts they'll warm up to Sherlock if they see what he's wearing. Joan can faintly hear Sherlock talking on the phone, able to catch snippets of his relatively short phone conversations. As she's adjusting the top half of the outfit, Sherlock calls up, "I rescheduled for tomorrow around ten am. But you'll have to be up at seven because I want to spend an hour and a half teaching you about disguises."

Joan resists groaning at the early wake-up order. Secretly, she's always relished being able to sleep in. At least it's going to be worth it, though she can't imagine why they'll need so much time to talk about disguising oneself. She has a feeling Sherlock is going to be talking about a lot of unorthodox methods regarding the subject.

When she's back down, Sherlock is looking out a window and nibbling at a banana. "Why do you care so much about trick-or-treating? You know it's a kids holiday, right?" Joan asks. She's honestly curious; it's rare to see Sherlock get excited over something he considers "consumer driven and mass marketing". Truthfully, she doesn't get why they can't just go buy a bag of candy. It's not like she's going to point that out though; he hates when people point out the obvious. And she can tell that going trick-or-treating, no matter how juvenile, seems to be something he really wants to do.

"I am well aware that this is a holiday no one over the age of fourteen participates in," Sherlock replies, turning around and placing down the banana on a side-table. "Outside of America and a few latin-american countries, it's not a very recognized holiday. I spent nearly my entire childhood and adolescence wishing that I could dress up as my favorite character and get free candy. Obviously, it never actually happened; my parents said I couldn't." Joan rolls her eyes. Of course that's why he wants to go. Sherlock isn't used to not getting his way.

"Well, now you can, given you live in the U.S.," she mutters. "Which you are clearly going to take advantage of for the next several years."

He ignores her slight jab and points to her black knee-high boots, saying, "Those will go with your outfit; I based it around your shoes so at least you wouldn't panic about not having matching shoes."

"How thoughtful," she says, only slightly sarcastically. "It's not even like I wasn't planning to go trick-or-treating."

"Sure you weren't," he replies cheerfully. When she's ready to go, he adds, "You look spiffing."

"Thanks. And you're dashing," she jokes.

It turns out not to be so bad. Nearly everybody gives them a weird look. More than once Joan will look at a tenant, point to Sherlock, and mouth _It was his idea, not mine; I just got dragged into going._ Most will give her a sympathetic look; she has a feeling they think Sherlock's lost a few screws and that she's some sort of full-time caretaker for him. One person gives them a brick because he had no candy to offer. Joan expected Sherlock to be disappointed. Instead, when the door closes, Sherlock turns to her and says, "We can get a lot of use out of this brick." Joan's not sure she wants to know what he has in mind.

When they're down walking around the entire building, they go back to their apartment, giggling over the various reactions people had. They trade candy and watch bad movies on TV, and Joan can't remember when she had more fun than this evening.


	3. Fright Night

**(A/N: Based on season 1's portrayal of Joan, I really doubt that she'd ever drink an alcoholic product. Given her medical knowledge, I think she'd know verbatim what any alcohol drink does to a human body and all about the stuff in the drinks. However, this is my interpretation of her. As such, I think that she'd indulge in drinking some form of alcohol every now and then if she got stressed or just felt like it. Also, just as an FYI, I'm making Sherlock and Joan about five years younger than the people who play them. Jonny is 41, so Sherlock is going to be 36, and Lucy is 45, so Joan is 40. I wrote the first several of the oneshots I'm uploading last year, about a year after the first season of "Elementary". And since it had been a year since it aired, I was sort of pretending that in this universe, Sherlock and Joan had known each other for about a year; I doubt they'd have been comfortable pulling half the stunts you'll read about around each other if they hadn't spent so much time in twelve months together. **

**EDIT: I know that this chapter might not have been to some peoples' liking and they disagreed with Joan drinking with Sherlock then recording him drunk. My intention with that scene was to show that sometimes I think Joan would act straight up immature sometimes. I don't think that she would act _so _responsibly all the time, especially since she and Sherlock are just friends by the end of S1. They don't have such a professional relationship anymore, so I was working under the ****impression that sometimes she'd act goofy around him since they've been vulnerable with each other, and they'd feel comfortable acting silly, especially when they're tipsy.)**

The thing about Sherlock is that he is a man full of contradictions. He is capable of seeing through everybody, deducing and breaking down anyone around him. But he can't do that with himself. He thinks he is unpredictable, but he could not be more wrong. Joan thinks he can't deduce himself because he's spent so long trying to get out of his own skin (practically his whole life), out of his own head and away from himself-an impossible task. She thinks Sherlock has to accept every part of himself before he can get in touch with his feelings, his thoughts, his impulses, and analyze them. Another thing about Sherlock is that he's seen dead bodies. He's a consulting detective; of course he has. He's solved so many crimes and been to hundreds of crime scenes. He's been to many mortuaries, hospitals, prisons . . . Sherlock's had time to get accustomed to to sometimes horrific looking bodies and the sick people who kill others. Clearly, one would think that Sherlock is quite used to killers and dead bodies. He wouldn't be Sherlock if he didn't have them in his life. It was a belief that Joan had carried around since she'd met him, had believed it to be true. But then she'd thought how much fun it would be to do something normal and mundane with Sherlock. She had decided that they would have a weekly movie marathon on Friday. Sherlock said he'd go along with her idea if he got to pick the genre. He picked horror. It was supposed to be a fun activity for them. They could eat pizza and have caffeine filled drinks like Mountain Dew and bond over an ordinary activity. They could have time to relax and do something that a lot of people did. Joan had been excited, to say the least. She was looking forward to it. In hindsight, she really should have known that of course her idea would backfire. After all, it was Sherlock she was going to be having a movie marathon with; when he was involved, things never went according to plan, especially if it involved the mundane. "How many movies are we supposed to pick?" Sherlock asks. He's standing in front of a large DVD case, looking a bit lost. "Doesn't matter," Joan says, her fingers skimming various DVD spines. She'd dragged him to the library with her so they could both get something they wanted to see. They lacked movies at their apartment. There's just one problem. She can't find anything that looks mildly interesting. She hears Sherlock shift slightly, and she looks up to find Sherlock looking at her with an extremely lost and almost sad expression. Joan sighs. She's forgotten that he's not used to doing something ordinary like this. It occurs to her that he's probably never done this before, which means he feels out of his depth (even if he won't admit it). That makes him feel like he can't do anything right and makes him feel like he's been backed into a corner. He ends up lashing out at others. Joan realizes that it's only taken her a couple seconds to come to this conclusion based on his expression; she's gotten much better at reading her flatmate then she'd care to admit. "Why don't we both just pick two movies each," Joan suggests. "I'm not sure we'll want to sit through more than four movies in a row." He mumbles what sounds like an agreement as he shuffles off to look at the rest of the DVDs the library has to offer. She smiles, pleased. It's rare that he listens to her, and rarer still that he does so without a complaint or condescending comment. She stands up, straightening her back. Not able to find anything to her liking, she moves on to the next row. She doesn't really know what to look for. Her favorite movie genre is kind of cliched-she likes comedy and romance. At the very least, she's going to avoid getting any gory-looking movies, nervous that somehow they'll bring back memories of her failure as a surgeon, that they will trigger the depression and pain she worked so hard to get through. She walks up and down the aisles in the movie section, humming as she sometimes pulls out a promising looking movie. Joan's eyes start to blue after several minutes; she stops seeing DVDs and just sees what feels like an endless row of choices. She finally just decides to just pick the first two her hands touch, which turn out to be The Conjuring and The Blair Witch Project. She's sort of tired from solving two cases with Sherlock today, and all she wants is to just relax this evening. Joan turns around in a circle, craning her neck a bit. She can't see Sherlock anywhere, which makes her wonder if he's even in the DVD section anymore. "Sherlock!" she softly calls out, ignoring the few people who shift and glare at her or shush her. She's ready to groan and starts to wonder where the hell he could have gone. It would be just like him to take off if he was feeling bored and not tell her. "Here!" Sherlock chirps from behind her. He's holding two DVDs (Saw and Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and looking relatively pleased with himself. "I got the two that looked the most scary and the least gory," he says, showing her the covers. Joan sucks in a breathe and spins around. "You scared me. I didn't even hear you come up," she mutters to him. "Come on; let's go get these checked out and then get a pizza." "Sometime I'll teach you how to quietly approach some unsuspecting person and scare them," Sherlock replies, eyeing the old Mrs. Berkley as they pass her. Mrs. Berkley lived in the same apartment building as them (a floor below) and was fond of telling Joan to be quiet when they were both at the library. Joan stifles giggles as they check out their movies and walk back out into the New York night. Back at the apartment (and carrying a box of hot pizza each), they kick off their shoes in the general direction of the downstairs closet. "You want to eat before we start, or eat and watch the movies?" Joan asks. She'd rather sit and talk first, but figures that since he's been in an irritable mood all day, it would be better to let him choose. He's been annoyed that the two cases he solved today could have been done without his help. He sometimes claims, on days like this particular one, that the N.Y.P.D. is "filled with useless, incompetent cretins who feel compelled to use up as much of my time and intellect as they want just because they can't be bothered to do their job and solve even the easiest of crimes". Joan would rather he stops ranting; she's bored to tears of listening to them and has about memorized every single one of his angry speeches. Sherlock decides on watching a movie and eating. "I don't have very much to say," he tells her through a yawn. "You never have much to say unless it's about a case or you're tutoring me," Joan reminds him. "That," he tells her as he gets out two plates, "is a lie. I talk a lot about all sorts of things." "You really don't. You talk about crimes. You talk about bees. You talk when you're tutoring me or showing off your deduction skills. And that's about it," Joan counters, removing one of the plates because dear God it's dirty. "Get out a glass; I don't want to drink my Mountain Dew in this," she says, anxiously waving the tall styrofoam cup in his face. Sherlock does, though it's like he's ignored half of what came out of her mouth. "I can talk about a range of subjects, thank you very much," he grumbles. "Mummy felt it necessary to teach me Conversation. And Diplomacy, and Poise." Joan feels giggles pouring out of her mouth again. "I can't believe you still call your mom 'mummy'," she remarks, eyes twinkling. What kind of mother did you have anyway? I don't think anybody learns those subjects anymore, if ever. Sounds very old-fashioned." Sherlock glares at her, though she ignores it. "My parents are very . . . traditional," he tells her, putting a slice of pizza on each of their plates. "Mummy home-schooled Mycroft and I while Father worked." He darted into the living room before she could ask anything else, which only served to pique her curiosity. "Who's Mycroft?" she inquires, trailing after him at a slower pace. "Is he some childhood friend of yours that your parents took a liking to?" Joan can't quite believe that Sherlock had any friends during the first eighteen years of his life. Not that she means to be mean, but she's known Sherlock since he was a thirty-five year old recovering drug addict. Saying that he had been rude and cocky was her being nice. She can't imagine what he'd been like growing up. "It is my misfortune that Mycroft happens to be my older brother. By seven years," he utters distastefully after a minute, popping in the DVD and settling onto one end of their new couch. The last statement is said like it has been told to him many times over the course of his life. "You never mentioned you had a brother." Joan shifts uncomfortably as she sits down with her plate. "I thought we were past keeping secrets like that." She looks at him, feeling kind of let down, almost betrayed but not quite. "I said I wouldn't hide anything from you. That doesn't mean I'm going to share everything about my life," Sherlock snarks, sounding faintly like the way he had when they'd first started their sober companion/client relationship. "You could have asked if you'd been curious. And yes, I would have been truthful." Joan shrugs, doesn't respond, and clicks on the TV. She supposes he's right. Sherlock has been really good about being transparent with her, even though she's not his sober companion anymore. He's right that she could have asked if she wanted. Sometimes, though . . . sometimes she just expects that he'll tell her basic things like that, instead of always leaving her to wonder. They start with Paranormal Activity first. Truthfully, they're both extremely bored and find it unentertaining. By the time it's halfway over, they decide to rewind it and play a drinking game from start to finish. Joan knows that Sherlock is adult, that he can and will make his own decisions about what he'll do. But he still lets her make the executive decision that they can both drink alcohol, will allow her to closely monitor his behavior for the next week so that he doesn't show signs of relapsing or tendencies to want to drink more. "I vote we take a drink every time someone screams," Sherlock suggests loudly from the kitchen, grabbing four beers (two for each of them). "And every time someone makes a bad decision," Joan adds as she puts her plate on the table. They go back and forth like this while they get ready to re-watch the movie. "We have to take a drink every time someone talks to the camera." "Every time they say a swear word or another character's name." "Every time the scene switches or it goes to night vision." "Whenever nothing happens or they say 'document' or film'." By the time they're done watching the movie again, Sherlock is more than tipsy as they pop in Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Joan pretends to drink, though she takes sips every now and then. Mostly she wants to keep an eye on Sherlock. And honestly, she's a bit worried about what they'll do if they're both drunk. Knowing Sherlock, he'll talk her into scaling a building and she'll think it's a great idea. As Sherlock drinks his way through Texas Chain Saw Massacre., he goes from laughing and hysterical to moody and quiet. Joan begins to complain almost instantly about the lack of professionalism done with the mutilation done to the victims, going on about how fake it looks or how obviously no one did their research about realistic reactions. She is unimpressed and annoyed. Sherlock, on the other hand, starts to cry when it's almost done. That is when Joan should have realized their movie marathon was not going to go as planned. "We h-have to . . . to . . . We have make circles!" he hisses at her, hiccuping and slurring his words. "W-with-h salt!" He staggers up and sloppily walks to the kitchen. "This'll, uh . . . it'll ward off-f bad people if we make circles with it!" he declares cheerfully, waving a can of whipped cream around. "Sure it will," Joan mutters, deciding to indulge him. She's pretty sure he's talking about using salt to ward off evil spirits, but decides not to correct him, since she's not one hundred percent positive that that's what he's thinking (and that she's right). Joan grins suddenly, as she watches Sherlock saunter sideways off to one of the many windows in their apartment. She decides to videotape him, smothering laughter as she thinks of the endless amusement it will provide. Joan catches up with Sherlock a few minutes later, pressing 'Play' on her new iPhone. She catches him making whipped cream circles, waltzing around the kitchen with a box of waffles, and trying to play paintball with a chair that has handcuffs on it, among other things. He goes on about how he played a jukebox, pointing to the TV (Joan isn't able to ever figure out what he's talking about) and how he once was a master in ping pong. Soon after, he begins to trail off, looking more sleepy by the second. Joan has to clean up some of his vomit before she can get him up to his bed, where he falls asleep before hitting his pillows. When she plays the videos back to him the next day, Sherlock is not amused, though Joan laughs until her sides hurt. They keep having their weekly horror movie marathon, and every week Joan, with a lot of what she calls "blind optimism and naivety", somehow thinks that they will actually be able to do something mundane and normal. The next week, they decide to send a crate of baby chicks to Tobias's office after watching It (Joan, for her life, can't remember how that movie inspired them to do that). The week after, they decide to put bugs in ice cubes and fill all of the food they don't like with hot sauce. They deliver a bit of both things (ice cubes and unwanted food) to all the residents they don't like. Joan sometimes wonder if they're ever going to do something ordinary and relaxing, and once asks Sherlock if they will. He scoffs and says, "I thought we were both of the same opinion that we are too good for ordinary." She laughs and wonders how he manages to make silly pranks so much fun, even though the ones they pull are for teenagers, even though they should be watching movies and taking a break.


End file.
